


and i catch fire

by astrid_fischer



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Organization XIII (Kingdom Hearts), Organization XIII Era, Post-Break Up, you ever double down on it for two years, you ever fuck up so bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 06:08:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18543862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/pseuds/astrid_fischer
Summary: “You still taste the same,” Axel murmurs in her ear, and hears the noise that Saix tries not to let escape. She drags her tongue over Saix’s cheek and Saix makes a low, furious sound and shoves her off, wiping the back of her gloved hand over the spot.





	and i catch fire

**Author's Note:**

> this is phee's fault for drawing [this perfectly innocuous akusai-but-lesbians art](https://twitter.com/popplioikawa/status/1118859253182152709) which nevertheless absolutely led to me having a nervous breakdown, which is my only explanation for this. she has since drawn [this somewhat less innocuous akusai-but-lesbians art](https://twitter.com/popplioikawa/status/1119826760294486016).
> 
> title from [this quote](http://archangelruind.tumblr.com/post/168514925784/did-we-notdid-you-not-flame-and-i-catch-fire) by a.s. byatt. i wrote this listening to 'church' by aly & aj on repeat.

The _problem_ is that Saix is ignoring her. 

That’s always galling, always makes Axel feel a wild combination of furious and desperate, whether it’s in the common room or the hallway or in the middle of a meeting in that fucking ridiculous chamber in the heart of the castle. 

It’s worse when it’s in private, though. That’s the newest exciting development here at the good old Castle That Never Was, and it stings the most. When there’s no one else even there, no one to put on a show for but the two of them, and Saix _still_ won’t drop the act. 

Axel had strolled into Saix’s room without knocking and perched cross-legged on one of the overflowing low bookshelves, loudly complaining about how shitty her most recent assignment had been, five entire minutes ago, and Saix still hasn’t so much as looked up from the report she was writing when Axel slammed the door open. 

It’s absolutely intolerable. 

Saix can _hate_ her all she wants, that ship has sailed, apparently, without Axel knowing when or why, but ignoring her is just beyond the pale. 

It’s different when Saix wants to talk to _her_ , of course, then she’ll track Axel down all across the castle or all across the universe and lecture her to her lack-of-heart’s content, but when it isn’t on her terms suddenly Axel is invisible. 

Axel abandons the shelf with an audible huff and wanders over to Saix’s desk, peering over her shoulder as she writes. This too is met with no reaction. 

“You’re really going to pretend I’m not here?” Axel asks, loudly, close to her delicately pointed ear. 

_Like you could_ , she thinks but doesn’t say, _Like you could ever not notice me if you tried._

It’sone of the dozens of needlessly cruel things that seem to be always on the tip of her tongue, lately. 

Sometimes she manages to swallow them. Sometimes, they spill out because she feels like they’ll choke her otherwise, black and poisonous, like swallowed charcoal.

“That’s very mature,” Axel goes on, and rolls her eyes. “Very befitting a second in command.”

That’s a new tender spot, and even as she presses her thumb against the bruise Axel knows she’s hurting both of them. 

Saix has only had that particular title for about a week, and oh boy have they _not_ been talking about it, even more than they don’t talk about anything else, these days.

Still no reaction, though, and Axel tries a different tactic. She shifts and slides back to sit down on the edge of the desk, right on a whole lot of papers that are probably necessary for something or other. Her thigh is close to Saix’s hand where she’s still carefully writing in neat cursive. The pen falters but doesn’t still. 

It’s so tempting to slide right into her lap, to grab the stupid pen out of her hand and throw it somewhere, to _make_ her look up. 

Those tactics had worked once, and only once. 

Axel had come in with a plan, which was straightforward: to say terrible, needling things and get in Saix’s face and under Saix’s skin until Saix snapped. 

Saix had, rather splendidly, and had in the course of trying to drag Axel physically out of the room wound a gloved hand into her hair and pulled so viciously that tears had sprung involuntarily to Axel’s eyes. She’d sunk to one knee because the other had buckled. 

At that point the plan had turned into Axel just begging Saix to touch her, please, anything, _please,_ and _that_ had turned into Saix spreading her out over her desk and fucking her with her fingers until the papers crumpled beneath them were soaked. 

It hadn’t worked since.

“I’m sure you’re hoping I’ll just go away,” Axel says, pulling off one glove and examining her own blunted fingernails. “Unfortunately for you, I’m all done with my mission and have nothing but time. The rest of the day stretches before us.”

Saix says nothing, but the set of her shoulders is tense. She’s doing a poorer job of pretending not to be bothered by Axel’s presence now that she’s closer.

Axel thinks she might just be writing nonsense now, but she is still writing regardless, slow and methodical. Saix may be an awful liar, but you could never accuse her of not being a committed one. 

It’s clear that she has some newfound resolve, though, and Axel’s not going to get her attention just by being annoying. 

The thing is, she’s decided she can’t possibly leave this room without winning. A new tactic is called for. 

Axel stands up again, and sees Saix’s shoulders relax, a silent exhale. 

Axel can hear the following sharp inhale, though, when she gets down on her knees and crowds herself into the space beneath the desk, jostling the chair and Saix’s legs in the process. 

She can hear it just as clearly as she can hear the frosty unspoken _What do you think you are doing?_ conveyed in the pointed silence that follows.

Axel, who thinks it’s fairly obvious what she’s doing and whose fault it is, knows that there are two potential ways for this to go. 

One is that Saix kicks her, hard, with her sharp-heeled boots, and finally gives in and pushes back her chair and shouts at Axel to get the fuck out of her room, just like she could have done first thing and avoided this whole situation, frankly. 

The other is that, having already committed to stonewalling her, Saix will stubbornly refuse to back down now.

Axel is fine with either, but she’s somewhat hoping for the latter. 

“If you’re going to ignore me,” Axel explains with a lazy shrug, _feeling_ Saix’s eyes zero in on her the second she drops her gaze deliberately, “Then I guess I’m going to have to entertain myself.”

Saix startles when Axel gets a hand under the hem of her long coat and trails her fingertips up, tracing a line over the top of her boot where it gives way to bare skin, down around to the back of her knee. 

She rubs a small circle there with her thumb, waiting to see if Saix will jerk her leg away. She doesn’t.

Axel nudges Saix’s legs apart, just a little, just a test. She’s still halfway sure that kicking is imminent. But Saix lets that happen too, and Axel feels heat pool in the pit of her stomach.

It’s not clear if Saix thinks she can out-bluff Axel or if she’s just that stubborn; either is likely, but Axel couldn’t care less about her reasons anymore because she’s shivering absolutely everywhere Axel touches her, and Axel knows she must _hate_ that. It’s beautiful.

Axel makes a show of removing her other glove, peels it off with her teeth. Last time Saix had fucked her, she’d left them on. Making a point, probably. Axel’s point is different. 

She shifts forward on her knees, pushing Saix’s legs apart even wider. This time there’s resistance, slight but noticeable. She always was easily embarrassed. Axel leans in to graze the exposed side of her thigh with her teeth, sucking a messy almost-kiss there. 

“Either I’m here or I’m not, which is it?” she asks cheerfully, leaning her head against Saix’s knee and smiling up at her from beneath the desk. Saix is looking away again, of course, focusing on the papers in front of her so intently Axel’s surprised they don’t burst into flame. The set of her jaw could cut glass.

Axel hums, and allows a few seconds to pass before she tries to nudge Saix’s legs apart again. This time it’s easy, clear she’s made her choice, and Axel crawls forward into the empty space until there’s no room anymore for her to change her mind and close them.

“Better finish that report,” Axel says chidingly, working the coat’s lower zipper up and up so that she can ruck the cheap fabric up in handfuls, pushes it out of her way up around Saix’s hips. She can hear the acid slip into her own voice as she adds, “Have to keep the boss happy, don’t you?”

Axel’s pushing it, she knows. There’s still a limit, even now, to what Saix will let her get away with, and she’s no longer sure the way she used to be what falls on which side of that line.

A muscle works in Saix’s jaw but she still doesn’t break. Instead she very pointedly stabs a period—from the sound of it, right through the paper—at the end of whatever sentence she’s still managing to write, somehow. 

Axel has had about enough of that, though, because she’s been issued a clear challengeand she refuses to lose those. She’s _going_ to make her put that fucking pen down. 

Axel slides her palms flat up over the smooth skin of Saix’s thighs and hooks a finger in the lace of her underwear, pulling the damp fabric aside to expose her. She feels a surge of triumph, a rush of dark gratification that even now Saix is still unmistakably so wet for her, that Saix must _know_ she is.

She gets in close, huffing a deliberate breath of warm air over Saix’s slit, dragging her nose over the patch of coarse hairs above. Saix jolts like she’s touched a live wire, but her gaze doesn’t drop one centimeter below the edge of the desk. 

Saix wanting her isn’t good enough, of course, isn’t what Axel wants by half, but if it’s what she can have she’ll take it. She fits her thumb into the hollow of Saix’s hip, slides her other arm under and around Saix’s leg like an anchor.

Axel flicks her eyes back up. Above her, Saix is still doing a passable impression of someone who thinks, somehow, she might possibly walk away from this situation a victor.

When Axel licks into her Saix’s whole body tremors, violently, but she doesn’t make a single sound. 

Axel looks up again to see gritted teeth and furious gold eyes fixed on her, and it’s good enough that she feels a throb between her own legs in the glorious fraction of a second before Saix’s gaze flickers away again. It looks like it might take effort this time.

Axel doesn’t understand Saix one bit, but if there’s one thing in the universe she had memorized, it was Isa. 

Every single part of her, everything she was. How to make her angry. How to make her laugh. How to get her off. 

Axel had spent almost two years compiling an extensive catalog on that last one especially, since she was sixteen and Isa was seventeen and they had first gone from lazy kissing to frantic, gasping touches on the bank of the river behind the Radiant Garden castle in the middle of summer.

Axel knew that Isa liked having her neck kissed, knew she could be in turns shameless and deeply shy, knew the soft, throaty sound she would make when Axel woke her up in the morning with her fingers inside her.

Those things are still fixed in Axel’s fading memories, like imprints more than anything, like instinct. This could be over almost immediately if Axel wanted, but she doesn’t. She wants to revel in it, wants to drive home the point she’s so enjoying making.

Saix can be cold to her and ignore her and turn her back on her again and again, but she’s still hot and melting under Axel’s mouth. She still reacts to every single touch, and Axel wonders if she’d be like that with everyone or if it’s just for Axel, if it’s just because of the echo of Lea-and-Isa, if she just can’t help it even now.

Axel’s frustrated with the limitations of their current positioning so she pauses briefly in her mission and grips Saix’s hips more firmly, digging in her fingers to pull her forward to the edge of the chair without warning, and now it’s easy to hook Saix’s other leg over her shoulder to give herself more room. 

For her part Saix has to grab for the desk in a highly undignified way as her weight is shifted without her consent, to avoid losing her balance. She’s staring at the wall like it’s fascinating but her eyes have gone a little unfocused, and a deep flush is coloring her cheeks.

When Axel licks a lazy, sloppy kiss right into the center of her, when she feels Saix’s heel bite into her back in involuntary response, she thinks Saix is lucky the chair is there to give her the illusion of posture because Axel can tell she’s more collapsed back against it than she is actually sitting in it, anymore.

It’s been too long since Axel got to do this. She loves doing this, always did, loves the taste and the wetness on her chin and the way Saix is visibly unraveling because of it, fighting it so hard and losing all of her careful composure anyway. 

Because the room is so quiet, the sounds of Axel eating her out are filthy. If Axel weren’t listening hard for them, the stifled noises Saix is making would be drowned out. 

Axel feels drunk on it, on every hitching breath and faint inhale that she hears, because she knows how much Saix values control and if she’s slipping even that much, it must be good.

Isa was always quiet in bed. Axel had always enjoyed making her loud. 

Axel teases her clit with her tongue, raises her eyes and meets Saix’s gaze as she does it. Saix’s lashes are lowered, her eyes narrowed. She’s looking openly down at Axel now, a flush painted over her cheekbones and throat. The new scar stands out even more starkly because of it. 

She doesn’t have to say anything. That she’s looking is surrender enough. She might as well be begging. 

“I could leave you like this,” Axel says. Her voice comes out low and rough. She rubs her fingers over Saix’s wet slit in lieu of her mouth, watches as Saix’s eyes try to close in response, as she fights to keep them open. “I _should_ , for ignoring me.”

She won’t, though. They both know she won’t. Isa on the other hand had sometimes kept her on the verge of orgasm for hours, had even gotten up to go take a walk or read in the other room and left her worked up and desperate, once or twice, if they were having an argument.

Axel had never had the self control not to finish something she had started. 

It’s uncomfortable under the desk, and the cold stone of the floor is unforgiving on her knees, and she’s so turned on herself she can barely stop from getting a hand between her own legs, but Axel ignores all of that and leans in again to drag the whole flat of her tongue over Saix’s cunt, digs fingers into the meat of Saix’s thigh as she feels her squirm in protest over the too-much too-sensitive feel of it.

She’s close now, Axel can tell. She’s trembling on the edge of it, and Axel keeps her there on purpose, deliberately avoiding the places she’d focused on before. She slides her tongue directly into her instead, feeling the aborted movement of Saix’s hips as she forces herself not to push forward into Axel’s mouth.

Axel’s almost gotten lost in it when she feels fingernails graze her scalp and then Saix’s hand is grasping her hair, pulling just this side of too tight, grounding her back in the present moment. 

The present moment, Axel thinks, lightheaded with the force of the the vindication that rushes over her, in which she has _fucking won_.

The triumph makes Axel giddy. It makes her feel generous. She turns her attention back to Saix’s swollen clit, closing her mouth over it and sucking at the same time as she slides two fingers into her to fuck her, deep and steady and relentless.

It only takes seconds, after that. She doesn’t scream but Axel knows when she comes because she goes taut like a bowstring, clutching harder at Axel’s hair, so violently it feels like she might pull strands of it out by the roots.

She collapses back in her chair, and even without the full possession of her faculties it’s only a matter of seconds—one, two, barely three—before she realizes her mistake and lets go of Axel, stops touching her like she was burned. 

Axel crawls out from under the desk, legs shaky, and wipes a sleeve over her mouth, looking down at Saix. Her eyes are closed and she’s breathing shallowly.

There’s purple eyeliner smudged across the exposed soft skin of her inner thighs, and ink spotted over the desk.

Saix had snapped her pen, Axel realizes. Her right hand is stained with ink, too, and she’d left black fingerprints across the edge of the desk where she had gripped it, where she had done everything possible to avoid touching Axel at the end. 

She had failed, though, and Axel won’t forget it. Somewhere, ink must be clutched into her own hair like shadows. 

Axel’s scalp hurts and she’s feeling a little dizzy with how badly she needs to come at this point, honestly, but that’s all fine. She’ll be getting off on this for weeks, after all. She can wait a little longer.

She takes advantage of Saix’s current disarmed state and leans in to kiss her, hard, with Saix’s own taste still on her tongue. This isn’t allowed, not ever, not anymore, and Saix stiffens but she’s too late, Axel is already pulling back.

“You still taste the same,” Axel murmurs in her ear, and hears the noise that Saix tries not to let escape. She drags her tongue over Saix’s cheek and Saix makes a low, furious sound and shoves her off, wiping the back of her gloved hand over the spot.

Axel tastes blood in her mouth, sees red on Saix’s. She’d bitten through her own lip trying to keep quiet, Axel realizes, as bitterness sends dark tendrils of shadow curling around the void where her heart isn’t, anymore. She’d rather bleed out than scream. 

Axel lets out a raucous laugh because she can’t help it, but Saix only looks away again, sharply, and Axel falters a little bit in her smug anger because the look on Saix’s face — well, if Axel didn’t know her better, she’d think Saix was about to cry.

Something unpleasant and unfamiliar twists in Axel’s chest, and she doesn’t feel that much like she’s won anymore, so she opens her mouth to say something joking, and—

“Get _out_ ,” Saix says, voice ruined, redoing the zip on her coat with a brutal, efficient tug, and Axel remembers with a weight like lead settling into her stomach that things are still the same.

Saix still hates her, and nothing Axel tries will change that. She feels cold all over. _You let me_ , _you wanted me to, you don’t get to pretend like I disgust you now,_ Axel wants to throw at her, but doesn’t, because there’s no point to it.

“You should clean yourself up before your next appointment,” Axel says instead, vicious now from hurt. She waits until Saix is watching her to lick her own lips. “You look like a mess.”

She doubts she looks any better, knows her hair is likely a tangled ruin and her mouth must be red and swollen and her teardrops are probably smudged all over her face just like they're all over Saix, but she’ll wear those things like a badge of pride. 

“You may want to rewrite that,” Axel adds helpfully, gesturing to the ink-stained report, and gives a mocking two-fingered salute on her way out.

She’s halfway down the hallway before she hears something smash.

**Author's Note:**

> being unbelievably cruel to your ex on accident because you are just too stone cold oblivious to realize they're still in love with you, amirite ladies?
> 
> while writing this i thought many times "lily please, be reasonable, you know they wear pants under these coats." fortunately, i remembered i am not a coward.


End file.
